Video Games for Science, Mouth Bacteria, and Jurassic Butterflies: Lux Recommends #30

Welcome to Lux Recommends #30, the newest edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (and want to receive this by email? Sign up here).

Articles

The Case Against Reality: Donald Hoffman’s fascinating theory of reality, with consciousness not atoms, quarks, strings, and electrons as the basic ‘bits’ that make up the universe. — Zavain

Researchers release video game to help build a better test for tuberculosis: Evidence for both the convergence of technologies, and for technology doing good.— Bilal

Your Mouth is Full of Bacteria Blooming. And it’s Beautiful: Science imaging is truly incredible these days. — Adam G

A Princeton psychology professor has posted his CV of failures online: This is awesome. Wish more people did that. I should draft one for myself. My favorite would be that Princeton rejected me for both undergrad and grad school. They consistently didn’t like me. — Bilal

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight: We really are shooting in the dark with respect to nutrition and metabolism. — Adam G

Italian Cuisine Worth Going to Prison For: Dining out. In prison. — Adam G

Books

The Just City by Jo Walton: Athena answers the prayers of philosophically minded people throughout history and help them to build a real version of Plato’s Republic on an Ancient Greek island, along with about 10,000 freed slave children (Apollo tags along). Sounds bizarre but this is actually a carefully thought-out concept and this novel is packed full of really interesting ideas and thoughtful discussions. (note: still reading this one)— Sam